The Walking Dead: Diary of a Survivor
by Martin70
Summary: One survivor's tale from in the Midwest. (OC's) How long can he survive? Please read and review!
1. Prologue

The Walking Dead: Diary of a Survivor

**By Martin70**

NOTICE: THIS STORY MAY BE DISTRIBUTED FREE OF CHARGE BUT MUST NOT BE SOLD OR EXCHANGED FOR FINANCIAL RETURN IN ANY FORM.

COPYRIGHT/DISCLAIMER NOTICE

This story, "**The Walking Dead: Diary of a Survivor**" by **Martin70** is a figment of this author's imagination. All Characters portrayed in this story, are fictional and do not reflect actual people, either living or deceased.

No Studio, Company, or Cooperation is responsible for the content of this story. Any Characters used from any program or book are the sole property of their parent entities and are used here as a tribute to the original writers without their expressed permission, but with the understanding that no money will be made from this story and that no copyright infringement is intended.

**THIS STATEMENT MUST ACCOMPANY THE STORY: "****The Walking Dead: Diary of a Survivor****", IF DISTRIBUTED. THIS STORY IS FREE OF CHARGE AND MAY NOT BE SOLD OR EXCHANGED FOR FINANCIAL RETURN IN ANY FORM. THIS DEDICATION MUST ACCOMPANY ANY DISTRUBUTION OF THIS STORY.**

**Prologue**

May 22nd, 2010

Dear Diary,

I spent the day with Mary, helping plant a nice sized garden. Man it was a lot of work, but Mary, who's 67, worked right along side me all day! She's quite fit for her age! She sent me into town for some fertilizer to add around the tomato plants.

Saw a weird guy near the park on my way back, looked like he'd sprained his ankle, but he was still walking along like it was no big deal. Maybe he's a war veteran or something and got crippled by an IED.

Mary wants me to plant some potatoes and sweet corn tomorrow while she works on sorting out her canning supplies. She's been canning for over forty years and has a big pantry in her cellar for storing her canned goods. She told me she was planning to start selling some of her preserves is year if the fruits she wants to use turn out well.

May 23rd, 2010

Dear Diary,

The TV's been going nuts with all the coverage of some kind of pandemic that's now gone global according to the big three TV News agencies and AP. Mary's called all the neighbors and they're banding together to watch out for the infected.

Everybody's really worried about their families and calling around to see how they're doing.

May 23rd, (cont.)

Dear Diary,

My God… They say the infected are getting up after they die and attacking the living! I wonder what the hell happened… Did the military let some super bug get loose like in that Stephen King book? I'm not a religious man, or at least I wasn't a couple of days ago, but I pray to God that somebody finds a cure… FAST!

May 24th, 2010

Dear Diary,

We spent the day inventorying our supplies, Mary and me. We have enough canned goods to last us quite a while, but won't last forever. Mary decided we should build up the fencing around the farm and check for breaks so we went out together to walk the property line. I took my 9 Mil, and she had a .30/.30 rifle that belonged to her late husband.

We had scouted out the first portion of the line running along I-72 and found no breaks. The interstate ran by my place too, but I have a much smaller patch of ground than Mary, only ten acres to her five hundred. There weren't any breaks, but we stopped to watch a long line of Army trucks convoying their way East toward Springfield, IL.. It wasn't just a few trucks; the convoy was at least five miles long, and I could tell these guys were regular army, not National Guardsman. It was clears to me and Mary that the shit was about to hit the fan, with a vengeance.

We continued our trek north along the border between my place and Mary's and found one bad break where it looked like a herd of cattle had pushed though the old fence some years ago. Mary clucked her tongue and said her husband Fred was to have fixed this the week before he died, but apparently it'd never gotten done.

I grabbed my tools and set to work sorting out the fencing and clearing some brush that had grown up in the area and with Mary's direction we got the fence mended enough to keep anything from just knocking it down, then moved on.

On the north side of her place, we saw a girl walking in a field. She was just sort of shuffling along aimlessly. I called out to her and when she turned at the sound of my voice, my blood ran cold. She had no face. It was just… gone, like something had taken chewed it off as a snack and then went back for seconds…

Mary shot her before I could even react to the horror of it, blowing the girl's head off with the medium sized slug from her rifle. Then Mary came up to me and took ahold of me. I was shaking like a leaf. She said we needed to keep moving and told me to watch for more of those things.

I think the reason I was shaking so bad after Mary shot the girl was that I knew her. The girl I mean, she was one our neighbor's kids, Donna, I think her name was. She was fourteen, and had just been talking to me four days ago about how much she was looking forward to Summer Vacation. I calmed down as we moved westward and said a prayer for Donna.

We finished our patrol with only one other fence break where a tree had fallen on it. Luckily it was a small one and had been dead for years already before it fell. With Mary's help, I got it shoved off the fence line and we set about straightening the crushed fencing as best we could. After that we headed back to Mary's.

May 25th, 2010

It seems pointless now to keep putting in "Dear Diary" on these entries. Instead I'm just going to start with the date and go from there.

It all seems so pointless… Today, the military dropped firebombs on every major city in the country in an effort to stop the dead from walking once more. What the hell was the point of that anyway? Bombing the cities is a little pointless since the plague has already spread to the rural areas like mine. I suppose it did cut down on the number of those things wandering the cities and possibly leaving them, but short of a nuke, I doubt it will wipe out enough of them to make any real difference.

A thousand walkers, or a million of them, it only takes one of those suckers biting you, and then you're toast. You die and either get eaten or become one of them, or worse, both…

I decided that I should turn this into more of a journal now since otherwise it's a total waste of time, and maybe, just maybe, someday someone will read this and know my story and the stories of my friends. How we lived through this horror, and how we died.

So with all that in mind, I guess an introduction is in order. My name is Matthew Grayson, I'm 32 years old and will be 33 next month, on the 9th. I'm just an ordinary guy really, so plain in fact that for most of my high school years, I was almost totally ignored, by everyone, even the geeks… Yeah, I'm boring as hell. I'm a jack-of-all trades kind of guy. I know a little about everything, and not a whole lot about anything. I'm the quintessential plain man, that is, until you get to know me.

According to Mary, I'm what they call a late bloomer, well, from a social point of view. I've always been a loner. I've had two people in my life that I consider friends, and one of those is Mary. The other one was a guy named Steve in school. We went to the same school, from Kindergarten through our freshmen year in high school. Then Steve's dad found a new job in another state and that was that. We wrote each other for a while, but then the letters became fewer and farther apart and finally stopped after a year.

I'm not gay, I've had a few girlfriends over the years, but friends? Nope, not a one til Mary asked me for help after her husband passed away. I've worked for her ever since, and I've come to think of her as a true friend.

What about Donna? Well, I've always been friendly with my neighbors and she was quite a handful from what I've heard from her parents, but first off, she was only fourteen and that simply put her outside of my social circle, secondly I'm not a perv trolling for young girls and lastly I never really knew what to say to her in the first place. She usually did all the talking, and because I seemed to listen to her, she liked that and would never stop, not until she was called away by her dad. He'd see my eyes glazing over as I nodded where I thought it was appropriate and rescue me before Donna noticed.

Poor Donna, I should go check on the rest of her family tomorrow. You never know, one of them might still be alive out there.

May 26th, 2010

I went to my place today and gathered up everything I thought we might be able to use. Mary helped and we got some help from Jacob and Fran, our neighbors to the west of Mary's place.

Mary invited them to stay as well and after my place we went to theirs and continued gathering supplies.

We weren't worried about power since Mary's husband used to work for the local power company and they had a wind turbine on the property. It's one of those great big windmills you can see from the Interstates like in Nebraska where they have bunches of them in several rows. We only have the one though here. The local power company decided to put it up on Fred's place because it was so close to the interstate and they wanted to show it off to the local taxpayers and subscribers. As it turns out, Jacob works for the power company too and he knows how to maintain the thing, so we should be good for a while at least.

Anyway, Jacob and I loaded up a couple of his deep freezers in our pickups and took them to Mary's. Once there, we then reloaded all the food we took out of them for the trip over. Have you ever tried to move a loaded deep freezer? I don't recommend it, ever.

Between us, we had enough food to last us for a year, counting all of Mary's canned goods. Fran chipped in on the garden, helping to keep it weeded and watered as needed, so food was pretty much taken care of.

Our only real issue is meat. Once what we have runs out, we'll have to go hunting for more. We have no livestock to speak of, just a few chickens. Mary is suggesting we go ahead and slaughter them now. She's worried about any stray animals attracting the wrong sort of attention. The rest of us agreed and set to work on the ten chickens, which took the rest of the day.

May 27th, 2010

We went to Donna's today.

What we found will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Her whole family was dead, and they were all Walkers, even the toddler… Jessica.

I lost it when I saw her. Jacob cried like a baby after he put her down, I… I just didn't have it in me to do it myself. We finished off the rest and then sat on their front porch, both of us emotionally wrecked by what we'd seen.

After a while, Jacob told me to grow a pair and do what had to be done from now on if we ever saw such a thing again. If not, he said he'd kill me to protect his wife and Mary. I just nodded dumbly at him after it sank in that he was serious. He'll bear some watching… but I'll follow his advice.


	2. Chapter One: Decisions Part One

Chapter One: Decisions Part One

May 28th, 2010

Today, we went into the nearest town of Beaumont. There's a large Amish community centered around the town and I know a few of them.

What we found there was not encouraging, but there were still some people moving about trying to organize. The mayor had gathered as many of the common folk around the area and offered protection to the Amish in exchange for food.

Contrary to popular belief, the Amish do use electricity, just not in their homes or churches. One family ran a big dairy operation using gas powered generators and others had walk-in coolers and power to their barns for assorted things. They were off the main power grid because of this, but they needed fuel for their genies so they cut a deal for gas with the mayor as well.

There were a lot of sick people in town though, and Jacob wasn't too keen on sticking around because of it. He's quite a germophobe. I was concerned as well, and recommended to the mayor that he put all the sick people in a central area together, and that he tied them down… I'd seen enough to know that it wouldn't be long before some died and then turned.

The mayor took offense at my suggestion and demanded that we leave. We complied.

After Beaumont, we went to a few of the farms of the Amish people I knew. Most were leery of us, but a few were cordial enough to see what we wanted. After I explained that we were just seeing how well they were getting along, and not there to take or steal anything, they offered us some food and inquired about how we were doing in return.

I spent a few hours speaking to a man named John Yoder, talking about what we had and telling where we were. I then told him that if things got bad here or in Beaumont to make a run for Mary's.

We drove back to Mary's to find a few extra trucks in front of her place. Mary was outside talking to three men I didn't recognize as we pulled up.

The men eyed me and Jacob as we walked up and stood beside Mary. I didn't like the look of them and it was obvious that Mary was glad to see us. Each of them was carrying a shotgun or rifle slung across their backs. One of the guys had a nasty scar on his face that ran along his right jawline.

Mary was telling them it was time for them to leave, and there was nothing for them here. She's a good judge of character and I'm not bad either. These guys were bad news. I could see their leader, the guy with the scar, weighing his odds now that me and Jacob had showed up. I wanted to fight, but I could tell he didn't like the odds, even if one of us was an older woman, so he waved his men back to their trucks and they left.

That was a big wake up call for us. We decided if we were gonna stay here, we needed to fortify the place, not just against walkers, but against bad people too like Scarface.

We began to make plans…

May 30th – June 13th, 2010

We needed to build a wall, one that was strong enough to keep out any number of walkers and fortified enough to make any bad guys give pause before trying to assault the place.

Jacob suggested we use Razor wire around the whole farm, but Mary shot that down, first because it would take too long and second because it would trap any wildlife on the farm with us and ruin our hunting chances once that wildlife meat source was expended.

Instead, we decided an Earthwork around a twenty-acre area, centered on the homestead would have to do and then razor wire around that. Where'd we get the razor wire? We raided a National Guard armory for it. Jacob was a former Guardsman and knew they kept pallets of the stuff. We set to work with a bulldozer and a large backhoe that Mary's husband had owned. While we worked an area, Mary kept watch for walkers and for any other trouble with Fran.

The ground we chose to include in our planned out compound was nice and flat for the most part, and what wasn't, I worked out flat with the dozer, pushing the excess dirt up into our earthwork.

The work took us two weeks to complete. In that time we killed thirty walkers that came around due to all the noise we were making with the heavy equipment.

We also cleaned out the National Guard Armory of anything that might be remotely useful to us including a surplus of heavy winter gear that was kept on hand. We were set, I even found stuff in my size that was better than what I already owned and set it aside. All the weapons, trucks and heavy equipment were gone save for large truck that was down with a bad fuel pump. Jacob located a spare pump and replaced the bad one; we then used the truck to haul more supplies back to Mary's.

To the southwest of us is another small town called Lucas. I went there for grade school and then on to Franklin to the west for high school. We spent some time there looking for a few of Jacob's friends, but they were either dead or just plain missing. While we searched the now abandoned town, save for a small walker population, we found more food, gas and diesel fuel for the bigger trucks. (Mary's farm has two large tanks, one for gas, and the other for diesel fuel.) We knew our own supply wouldn't last forever and we'd used quite a bit of diesel creating the earthwork.

We refilled both tanks and found ten 55-gallon drums to store more fuel in, siphoning fuel from abandoned cars and diesel from semis we saw in Lucas, which is right off the interstate.

After all this work we got the razor wire set up in three rows around the earthwork, Razor wire is very dangerous to handle, so we took our time setting it up. We also had to wear specialized gear made mostly of heavy leather and what looked like chain mail to the layman to handle it. It was hot sweaty work and it seemed like we'd never get done.

On the last day, as we were stringing out the wire, a walker attacked Jacob while he was wearing the gear. We dispatched the thing quickly, but not before it broke off several teeth on his well-protected right arm. We looked at each other for a few minutes when we saw that Jacob was unharmed and I could see the wheels turning behind Jacob's eyes as we thought of the implications. With this gear on, and a few more modifications to it to make it a little more comfortable to wear, we would be walker proof when we went out on our supply searches.

It would take some work, but what else did we really have to do?

June 14th, 2010

John Yoder and his family showed up today. He eyed our earthwork like he was on the verge of changing his mind about coming in.

We'd made a large gate, which was one of only two ways in or out of the compound, by simply parking a large combine with a soybean head mounted to it in front of the drive. We then parked a semi directly behind that facing at a right angle to the combine, creating a block so the combine couldn't be rolled backward if it was rammed. It was a crude stopgap measure, but it worked. We'd also added more Razor wire all around the combine head and the cab, so no one could simply climb the head and reach the cab. The second way out is a single solid steel gate we made from a two-inch thick steel plate we found on the bed of a semi in Lucas. It was just large enough to allow one person to pass through it and it's front was cover in more Razor wire. Sure somebody who was determined enough could breach it, eventually, but the noise they have top make and the fact that we parked the dozer against it made that useless. Razor wire ran around the top of the earthwork and at the front were two more rows of the stuff like I mentioned earlier. Walkers would have little chance of getting passed all that. If they did, they had a large and deep ditch to navigate inside the compound with sheer walls fifteen feet high from the bottom of it. (All that dirt had to come from somewhere if you were wondering…)

John had his wife, his three sons, and five daughters with him. When Mary saw them, she had us move the vehicles aside so John and his family could enter, then she went out to them and tried to make them feel welcome. Mary has a generous heart and if I were older or she younger, well let's just say we'd probably have gotten married by now.

After some coaxing and me bringing out a case of bottled water from one of the fridges we had in the barn so they could drink and cool down from the heat of the day, John's wife decided we were okay and shooed her children into the compound with a nod of thanks. John followed us in and we sorted out a place for them to stay.

John refused to stay in the house, which is large but would have been pretty crowded with so many people, because it had electricity running to it. He also eyed the windmill with more than a hint of distaste, but he also looked like a man defeated.

We set them all up in a side barn that had a hardwood floor in the hayloft area that was quite comfortable. I'd thought about converting it into an apartment at one time, but Mary didn't want to spend the money setting up the electric and so it was really perfect for the Amish after they all set to work to make it habitable. I was amazed at how fast they set it all up.

That evening, we sat around a fire pit discussing what had happened after we'd parted from John.

Three days after we left, a group of men came to their farm and demanded food and lodging for the night. John agreed to the food and then offered them his barn. The leader, a man with a scar on his jaw, took offense at this and began to throw the Yoder family out of their own home. That night the men had slept in the house while John and his family were forced into the barn and left there for the night.

The next morning, Scarface told John that he'd be back and he'd eyed John's daughters in a way that alarmed him greatly. Then the gang left.

John had his family gather everything they could carry onto their two buggies and they headed to his wife's family's to seek refuge. They abandoned everything else.

At his in-laws, John was greeted by the sight of half a dozen walkers. It was his in-laws and the rest of his wife's brothers and sisters…

They didn't stop after that until they reached Beaumont where they were taken in. Beaumont was a ghost of its former self. Most of the population was either dead or sick or just trying to survive. The mayor and over half the town had become walkers and were put down by the same men he'd asked to protect them. Things were getting worse every day and it all culminated in a mass exodus last night when an apparent herd of walkers passed through the area around the town.

John remembered our offer and ran here, stopping at my place for the night before coming here today.

The Yoder's didn't bring much with them, but what they did have was a big help to us. They had eyes and ears so they could stand a watch against walkers and these bandits and they brought seeds, enough seeds for a big garden.

We have a garden of our own, but it wouldn't be enough for the number of mouths we now had to feed through Winter. Tomorrow, I'll plow up a bigger swath of ground and then disc it out smooth for planting. That'll take a few hours, but we'll need the space. Planting will be a little late on some of what they brought, but not by a lot and we'll have plenty of hands free to keep the fresh garden tidy.

The Amish don't believe in violence or going to war. I wonder if, as time passes here, they might change their way of thinking as we try to survive… Only time will tell I suppose.

June 15th, 2010

We spent the day preparing for and planting the new garden. John's family took over our old garden too, much to my chagrin, and put my gardening skills to shame.

John wants to go after some cows for their dairy, but Mary said no. The cows would likely attract walkers this close to the interstate with all their lowing and mooing sounds they make when they're hungry or being social with each other. I agreed.

After a bit of debate, we decided to go back to his farm and check on its condition. When we got there, it was obvious that the herd had passed through the area. There were a few stray walkers that had trapped themselves in the corral after feasting on some of John's dairy cows. We took them out and then searched the rest of the homestead.

The house was a complete loss. It looked like Scarface was mad when he came back to find the Yoder's gone. He and his gang tore the place up and had strewn all manner of shit and other nasty stuff, likely walker guts, throughout the interior. The stench was so bad; John just lit a lantern and tossed it into the house as we left it.

The other buildings were in similar condition, and John did the same to them.

I could see a bit of him die, each time he lit another lantern and gave it a toss. It saddened me that a man could spend so much of his life in one place, put all of his heart and soul into it and see it all come to ruin in the end.

I told him that we'd make the man who did this pay for what he'd done, but that just made John look sadder and more forlorn. It wasn't until later in the day that I remembered that the Amish were against violence of any kind, even against the deserving…

We salvaged a few things before we left, a big cast iron cauldron among them. Man that was a heavy sucker!

June 16th, 2010

We headed back into Lucas today to look for survivors, ones that were ready, willing and able to defend our compound in exchange for a hot meal and a cot.

We found a couple of Mexicans that were looting a house for supplies. They weren't armed though and were about to run, but I called out to them and said we were friendly. I used my broken Spanish that I'd learned in high school.

The leader of the two is named Raol, and other is his brother, Jorge. They'd been working in Franklin at a Mexican restaurant when the world went to hell and lost their whole family to a herd of walkers. Only able to escape in one of their goofy looking low riders by jacking both ends up so they were above the walkers and got away. Their car was parked on the street in front of the house they'd been looting. That was what had drawn my attention to the place.

After a bit of conversation they decided to join us, especially when we told them we had plenty of food to go around.

After the Mexicans joined us, we went in search of more people in the tiny burg. We found a small group of teens hiding in the grade school basement. There were seven of them and they ranged in age from thirteen to sixteen, boys and girls.

At first, this group was terrified of us and asked which girl we wanted now? I was dumbfounded for a moment, and then explained that we weren't with Scarface and were looking for survivors, trying to gather a strong group to fight off Scarface and the walkers.

Joshua, a gangly looking sixteen year-old was the apparent leader, and after a bit of coaxing and trying to convince them that we weren't there to rape them, he came forward to confront us a bit more openly. One glance at the Mexican brothers was the clincher. Apparently Scarface is prejudiced, of the Aryan Brotherhood variety. There was no way he'd let two Mexicans run with his gang.

This group piled into our two vehicles after gathering their meager belongings and we headed back to the farm.

Tomorrow, we're going to Franklin to see how one of the larger towns in the area has faired…


End file.
